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Re: Former CIA officer says US policies helped create IS

Originally Posted by jet57

And so what's wrong with my post?

Hm...

1. Modern Sunni Islamism dates from the establishment of the Muslim Brotherhood, and was first best expressed in the writings of Sayyid Qutb, circa 1920s.
2. The US did not install the Shah. The Pahlavi dynasty took over Iran in 1925.
3. Shia extremism did not start in Iran as a result of the defeat of the 1953 coup by Mossadegh, but rather later took advantage of it.
4. ISIS as an organization owes precisely.... nothing in its founding to the Islamic Republic of Iran, or the preceding monarchy.

Re: Former CIA officer says US policies helped create IS

Originally Posted by cpwill

Hm...

1. Modern Sunni Islamism dates from the establishment of the Muslim Brotherhood, and was first best expressed in the writings of Sayyid Qutb, circa 1920s.
2. The US did not install the Shah. The Pahlavi dynasty took over Iran in 1925.
3. Shia extremism did not start in Iran as a result of the defeat of the 1953 coup by Mossadegh, but rather later took advantage of it.
4. ISIS as an organization owes precisely.... nothing in its founding to the Islamic Republic of Iran, or the preceding monarchy.

At an NSC meeting in early 1953, President Dwight Eisenhower said "it was a matter of great distress to him that we seemed unable to get some of these down-trodden countries to like us instead of hating us."1 The problem has likewise distressed all administrations since, and is emerging as the core conundrum of American policy in Iraq. In All the Shah's Men, Stephen Kinzer of the New York Times suggests that the explanation may lie next door in Iran, where the CIA carried out its first successful regime-change operation over half a century ago. The target was not an oppressive Soviet puppet but a democratically elected government whose populist ideology and nationalist fervor threatened Western economic and geopolitical interests. The CIA's covert intervention—codenamed TPAJAX—preserved the Shah's power and protected Western control of a hugely lucrative oil infrastructure. It also transformed a turbulent constitutional monarchy into an absolutist kingship and induced a succession of unintended consequences at least as far ahead as the Islamic revolution of 1979—and, Kinzer argues in his breezily written, well-researched popular history, perhaps to today.

The CIA's immediate target was Mossadeq, whom the Shah had picked to run the government just before the parliament voted to nationalize the AIOC.

The US created a frankenstein in the ME and the chickens have come home to roost as they say. The destabilziation of the region with GW Bush invading Iraq opned up the hole for groups like ISIS. The Chinese have also made inroads due to the destabilization of the region.

You ought to read up.

“The people do not want virtue; but they are the dupes of pretended patriots” : Elbridge Gerry of Mass; Constitutional Convention 1787

Re: Former CIA officer says US policies helped create IS

Originally Posted by cpwill

The Times is trying to paper over the Administration's failures. Two years of conflict didn't radicalize the opposition - among the disparate opposition movements, we refused to adequately support the non-Islamists, with the result that they shrank under pressure from both Islamist and Regime forces, who at least worked in tandem to turn the fight into one between the two of them.

Mornin' CPW. Yeah that's why I went searching for this piece. As I knew the Times would come back and be talking the exact opposite of what they reported on last year. From the onset and even going back to the beginning wherein the MB incited and influenced the protests to rise up on Assad. Even though at the time he was being called a reformer by several Demos here in the US.

The MB backed rebels always had Military people that wanted to infuse Islamic Law in Syria.....plus, as you know the MB did want some payback on Assad for what his father had done to them in Syria.

Re: Former CIA officer says US policies helped create IS

"It depends on what the meaning of the word 'is' is. If the--if he--if 'is' means is and never has been, that is not--that is one thing. If it means there is none, that was a completely true statement....Now, if someone had asked me on that day, are you having any kind of sexual relations with Ms. Lewinsky, that is, asked me a question in the present tense, I would have said no. And it would have been completely true." -- Bill Clinton

I guess Clinton was ahead of his time; he already knew what IS stood for. He and Lewinsky were on a secret mission to figure out exactly what IS was all about.

"He who does not think himself worth saving from poverty and ignorance by his own efforts, will hardly be thought worth the efforts of anybody else." -- Frederick Douglass, Self-Made Men (1872)
"Fly-over" country voted, and The Donald is now POTUS. #MAGA

The US created a frankenstein in the ME and the chickens have come home to roost as they say. The destabilziation of the region with GW Bush invading Iraq opned up the hole for groups like ISIS. The Chinese have also made inroads due to the destabilization of the region.

I like how I listed 4 major problems, and you can only respond to one.

That being the case, the CIA and the Brits did indeed have a role in the events of 1953 - we came in at the behest of the Brits. I like how you cite All the Shah's Men - I spent a couple of months of my life, at one point, going through that tome and comparing it to other sources. Kinzer was a reliable transmitter of what his Iranian sources (who were themselves reliable transmitters of their media) told him. Certainly it is what the average Iranian believes today.

However, the Shah had the power under the Constitution of Iran to dismiss the Prime Minister from his post, and did so. He feared that Mossadegh would instead attempt to raise a series of street mobs against him, which he might have, and the US played a small role in linking him to loyal members of his military, who pledged to back him. Mossadegh was given multiple off-ramp options that involved not wrecking the Iranian economy, and chose to refuse them all. Kirbys' role was, well, let us be kind to the man and say that he very much wanted to live up to the standards of his family name, and may have stretched his importance a bit hoping to do so.

However, the thinness of your analysis breaks down on a few key points - This is Iran. Not Saudi Arabia. Not Egypt. Iran. Saudi's could not care less (except perhaps for the very small Shia minority) whether or not we interfered in Iranian politics, and to the extent that we enabled the Shah, they probably preferred it. The Sunni are not pissed off at us because of the 1953 counter-coup; Sunni Islamist extremism predates that event. Additionally, the straight line from 1953 to 1979 is a false one that ignores far larger drivers of that revolution. I would highly encourage you (or anyone, actually, who is interested in this topic) to read "The Unthinkable Revolution" by Charles Kurzman.

Re: Former CIA officer says US policies helped create IS

Originally Posted by MMC

Mornin' CPW. Yeah that's why I went searching for this piece. As I knew the Times would come back and be talking the exact opposite of what they reported on last year. From the onset and even going back to the beginning wherein the MB incited and influenced the protests to rise up on Assad. Even though at the time he was being called a reformer by several Demos here in the US.

The MB backed rebels always had Military people that wanted to infuse Islamic Law in Syria.....plus, as you know the MB did want some payback on Assad for what his father had done to them in Syria.

remember when Pelosi went to Syria and declared that The Path To Peace Runs Through Damascus?